China may have become the most attractive market in the mobile commerce sector. The country's retailers have been showing more support for mobile consumers in recent years, but Alibaba, the country's largest e-commerce group, has grown more aggressive in the mobile sector than any other group. The company has seen a great deal of promise in the mobile commerce space and recently launched the Alipay platform, which enabled consumers to make mobile payments while shopping. According to Alibaba, the Alipay platform has completed more mobile payment transactions in 2013 than PayPal and Square combined. Some 2.78 billion transactions from 100 …

Generating over $330 million in revenue last year, Line has shown the world how a messaging app can earn boatloads of money. During a visit to Line's Tokyo office, COO Idezawa Takeshi, revealed that games accounted for 60 percent of its revenue. The rest is split equally between stickers and business services like official accounts and branded stickers on Line. As its current business model stabilizes, Line is constantly searching for new ways to engage users while continuing to drive revenues. One of its most recent efforts to do so has been in e-commerce. For example, cosmetic brand Maybelline conducted …

Cond Nast's Glamour is rolling out a new mobile application and site that lets readers buy products straight from static magazine pages. Glamour's new Shop Glamour program includes both a responsive site - http://shop.glamour.com - and a free iPhone application. The marketing effort integrates both advertising and editorial content to activate the magazine. "I think that for us, mobile is increasingly becoming a pivotal platform and a huge way that readers come to us to discover fashion and beauty inspiration and then are able to take action on it is the last piece, and we feel Shop Glamour addresses that …

Tablets took over as the devices responsible for fueling the most mobile commerce last year and will continue to move mobile commerce going forward, according to a new study from Javelin Strategy & Research. Javelin's new "Mobile Payments Market: Tablet Payments Surge as Overall Mobile Retail Sales Top $60 Billion" report looks at how mobile payments fared in 2013 to predict how the market will shake out in the next five years. The report also suggests how retailers should be approaching both smartphone and tablet initiatives.

There's plenty of chatter that mobile is the key platform for emerging markets and while it is true that mobile adoption is growing, it isn't yet the dominant place for online commerce, according to new data. Messaging app Line began hosting flash sales for consumer brands back in December, and initial information from its pilot program in Thailand shows m-commerce is promising but has room to grow. The information has been released by aCommerce - the startup working with Line, which we profiled recently. Line has run six flash sales in Thailand. On each occasion, details of the product(s) on …

Security and functionality gaps exist in beacon deployments at retailers and other early adopters, warns Mobiquity Labs, an applied tech lab set up by mobility firm Mobiquity. These gaps in monitoring, authentication and authorization could significantly degrade the benefits of the beacons, warns Mobiquity Labs. "Beacons are a low-cost piece of hardware--small enough to attach to a wall or countertop--that utilize battery-friendly low-energy Bluetooth connections to transmit messages or prompts directly to a smartphone or tablet," explains a report by Business Insider.

Merchant Warehouse, a provider of payment technologies and merchant services, has announced it is bringing Isis SmartTap capabilities to the point-of-sale (POS) at Boston-based businesses. The program, which the company says is the first of its kind in the Boston area, gives small and mid-sized merchants the opportunity to deploy customized offers to new and prospective customers via the Isis Mobile Wallet through Merchant Warehouse's Genius Customer Engagement Platform. "The payments industry has been changing rapidly over the last few years, presenting significant challenges for smaller retailers to effectively compete with big-box stores," said Henry Helgeson, CEO, Merchant Warehouse.

In the latest example of how smartphones are making over the fast food dining experience, Taco Bell plans to introduce mobile ordering at all locations later this year. Many fast food chains have embraced mobile to enhance their loyalty efforts but, with the exception of the big pizza chains such as Pizza Hut and Domino's, enabling customers to place orders from their smartphones is taking longer to implement because of operational challenges. Taco Bell is addressing the needs of its core audience of millennials by developing its own mobile-ordering app in house.

Valentine's Day is creeping up very quickly but there is still time for some last minute purchases through mobile commerce, online, or in person. The trick to this buying game is to make sure to save the most out of the $19 billion that will be spent that day. Finding great deals allows shoppers to be able to find the perfect gift for their special someone, without spending the most. Typically, the closer the time comes to Valentine's Day, itself, the higher the prices climb. Many retailers know that shoppers become more desperate as the day comes closer, and count …

OpenTable, an online restaurant reservation service, has launched a new pilot program focused on mobile payments. The pilot program is meant to test the viability of using mobile payments as a way to allow consumers to pay for their meals quickly while dining out. This would allow them to, essentially, "skip" the check, so to speak. OpenTable believes that leveraging mobile commerce could help make restaurants more convenient and attractive to consumers that have become very reliant on their smartphones and tablets. The pilot program is currently restricted to San Francisco, California, but OpenTable plans to expand the program in …